


The Darwin Awards

by iamtheoneinthehole



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Groundhog day!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:52:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1339474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamtheoneinthehole/pseuds/iamtheoneinthehole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geoff honestly had no fucking idea how this had started, frankly by this point he didn’t care, all he knew was that he wanted it to stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darwin Awards

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this was inspired by a combination of Achievement Hunter’s Minecraft Let’s Play of the same name and a Supernatural episode called ‘Mystery Spot’. Enjoy!
> 
> A huge thanks to ‘coolasdicks’ for betaing this for me, once again you continue to live up to your name :)

Geoff honestly had no fucking idea how this had started, frankly by this point he didn’t care, all he knew was that he wanted it to stop… He did know when it’d started though. That part was actually pretty fucking hard to miss given the circumstances but a _how_ or a _why_ still evaded him no matter how hard he’d searched for answers in the hopes of stopping… well, whatever the hell this was.

It’d started on a Monday. It always started on a Monday. Geoff would wake up, get dressed, pour himself a coffee, manage to spill it (as he always seemed to somehow, despite his constant efforts to avoid it), go wake up the British dumbass he was living with, roll his eyes as he was forced to drag said British dumbass out of bed (quite literally… it was _never_ an easy task getting Gavin up in the mornings), go back to the kitchen to make breakfast, eat breakfast with Gavin, grab his bag off the end of the couch, give the Brit a lift to work…

The first time it’d happened they’d decided to take a detour on the way to the office. Gavin wanted to grab some ‘bevs’ for his and Michael’s ‘swimmy bev times’ and Geoff had been talked into it pretty quickly after he realized that this meant he’d be able to quickly pop into the coffee shop next door (which was all the more appealing to him given that the first coffee that day really hadn’t done the job it’d promised to).

So they’d parked up and Geoff had gone in search of his coffee and a few minutes later found him emerging from the shop with a warm, steaming mug of the stuff, closing his eyes for a moment as he enjoyed the slight burn it left in its wake as it slid down his throat… And then he’d heard screaming.

He’d quickly dropped the coffee cup, the forgotten drink slipping through his fingers as some kind of instincts (perhaps left over from his old army days) suddenly kicked in. He rushed over towards the source of the noise, bursting into the shop next to the one he’d just been in only to find a terrified looking kid holding a gun, a couple of other kids he guessed were meant to be his ‘backup’ doing just that… away from their leader. There was also a concerned looking shopkeeper who seemed to be calling the police and a couple of scared looking customers but Geoff barely saw any of them because there, in the center of all the chaos, was Gavin Free, laid out on the floor and in a puddle of his own blood.

Geoff had been at the idiot’s side in seconds, quickly stripping off his hoodie as he tried to hold pressure against the wound (and vehemently ignoring the instincts that told him the wound was fatal because it couldn’t be, it just fucking couldn’t okay?). The Brit had smiled at him, murmuring something about ‘pretty’ and ‘top’ and some other stuff he couldn’t quite catch because the man’s voice was scarily soft, almost inaudible, and he was pale as dicks and this wasn’t fucking happening. It fucking couldn’t be.

In the end, somehow, Gavin’s hand had found his and he’d gripped it tightly, perhaps too tight (though the Brit didn’t complain) as he’d murmured assurances that he honestly wasn’t sure were for Gavin or for him. They’d seemed to soothe the Brit a little though and the man had murmured a few more words that Geoff couldn’t quite catch before his eyes had suddenly shuttered down a little and started to go glassy and… no. No, this wasn’t happening. This was not fucking happening. No. Fuck this. He’d wake up and everything would be fine. This wasn’t fucking real. Because if it was, he was about to go to jail for murdering that kid stood across the store (still holding that fucking gun) who now looked like he was getting ready to bolt…

He’d been about to stand up and make chase when he’d woken up.

Just a dream then.

The relief he’d felt at that revelation was instantaneous and almost overpowering as he’d basked in the knowledge that his favorite British dumbass was safe, and alive, and asleep in the next room… and speaking of which, he should probably go make a change to that last part otherwise both of them would end up arriving late into work this morning.

But then, as he’d begun to get ready, he’d suddenly realized that everything that was happening around him was weirdly… familiar. Enough to give him an eerie sense of deja vu after he’d dragged Gavin out of bed and had moved into the kitchen.

After a few moments there he’d suddenly realized what it was. Everything he was experiencing was exactly like it’d been last night in the dream… he knew it was probably just coincidence but, all the same, he’d made a deliberate switch to pancakes for breakfast instead of the fry up he’d done yesterday, just to switch things up a little and help shake these weird feelings he was having.

He’d also made a point of not stopping off at the shops he’d usually use when Gavin wanted to buy his bevs, telling the lad he’d grab some went he went for his lunch break and that, this way, Gavin wouldn’t have to lug them around all day. The Brit had been a little confused but had agreed easily enough. That was the great thing about Gavin, he always had this sixth sense about which questions not to ask (because despite the comments he and the others they worked with often made about the Brit’s intelligence, emotion-wise he was probably the smartest of the lot of them).

They’d gotten to work without incident and Geoff had finally been able to shake off the weird feelings and the incident with that damned kid and his damned fucking gun as just a dream… admittedly a disturbingly vivid one but a dream all the same. Gavin was fine, Gavin was alive, and now Geoff needed to stop lingering over something that hadn’t happened and just get on with his goddamned job.

Gavin had collapsed a few hours later.

They’d rushed him to hospital and, after multiple tests, had claimed that something Gavin had eaten was giving him food poisoning of some kind. Apparently this was the ‘most advanced case of it any of them had ever witnessed’ and hadn’t Geoff just been fucking thrilled to bits for them and their scientific curiosity while his Brit was lying on the hospital bed, unconscious and looking scarily close to the shade of pale he’d been when he…

He shook off the thought, forcing himself not to think about that fucking dream right now as he’d thanked the doctor (perhaps a little sarcastically) for the update and had briefly moved through to the waiting room to check in with the Achievement Hunter team and Burnie who’d all insisted on coming with the Brit when he’d been rushed in here.

In the end, the doctors had been too busy examining test results and Geoff had been too busy informing the others of the news so no one had noticed when Gavin had started to choke on his own bile… no one had noticed until it’d been too late.

And suddenly Geoff had been reliving the nightmare he’d had last night, only this time it was a thousand times worse as a nurse informed them of this information, passing on condolences that Geoff barely even heard as he collapsed into his seat because Gavin Free was dead and he hadn’t even had the chance to be with him at the end, to say goodbye…

And then he’d woken up. Same bed, same position, same time, same amount of light peeking through the bottom of his curtains… this time Geoff knew it hadn’t been a dream though. He wondered if he’d passed out at the hospital and someone had brought him home, he wondered if he’d blacked out due to grief… he’d have to tell his parents.

He slipped out of bed, not even bothering to get dressed or grab coffee before he’d moved towards the Brit’s old room, bracing himself for the sight of- of a sleeping dumbass? But he’d… hadn’t he?

Geoff thought it was pretty understandable that he’d been confused as he’d backed out of Gavin’s room, retreating to his own to get dressed before grabbing the coffee that it seemed that he’d almost definitely fucking need this morning. By the time he’d gotten around to waking up the Brit only to have Gavin react in the exact same fucking way he had one the days when he’d- well the last two days, Geoff knew that despite the fact that Gavin was somehow impossibly alive… he hadn’t been dreaming either of the times that the Brit had died.

He’d been careful though not to let the Brit know about the inner turmoil going on in his head as he’d cooked him the same (safe) breakfast from the first day, making the same offer regarding bevs as yesterday and getting the Brit to work safely where he’d proceeded to hover over the man for most of the day, much to the man’s bemusement and the others’ querying eyebrows that Geoff decided not to dignify with a response (because how the hell could he explain this without sounding crazier than ‘mad king Ryan’?). But it seemed to be working since Gavin was still very much alive and they’d made it all the way to midday…

He’d been so busy watching Gavin, he’d never realized he should’ve been watching Ray too.

The man had stumbled into the Roosterteeth office after taking his lunch break, the blood visible through the man’s shirt even from across the room as Geoff had spotted it and rushed over. Apparently the man had been mugged on the way back to the office and, after one snarky quip too many, they’d decided to follow through on their earlier threat to ‘gut him like a fish if he didn’t shut the fuck up’. Geoff had called him an idiot and Ray had made some quip about how he figured Geoff would be a little nicer seeing as he was dying and all. Behind the bravado he’d presented though, Geoff could see his fear and so he’d sat and held his hand as Matt had rung frantically for an ambulance didn’t arrive until the Puerto Rican was already gone…

And then he’d fucking woken up. And he’d still had no fucking idea what was happening, only the definite knowledge that in the last three days (that apparently had never happened for anyone but him) he’d watched Gavin die twice and had Ray bleed out in his arms.

So that day he’d followed the same procedures with Gavin, agreeing to go with Ray when he went out for his lunch break and glaring daggers at any potential muggers as they moved from the office to the little cafe where the younger man sometimes liked to grab lunch. Any potential muggers, it seemed, had been scared off by something Geoff was doing and the pair of them had made it back to Roosterteeth unscathed.

Relieved that no one else seemed to be injuring and/or fatally wounding themselves, Geoff had settled back down to work as if nothing had ever happened, assuming that if he just got through the rest of that day without incident, everything would go back to normal and he’d be able to put this really fucking weird (and kind of traumatic) experience behind him.

As it turned out, that day it was Ryan he should’ve been watching. The man, apparently, had decided to do something about trying to resolve the missing footage problem by taking a closer look at the technology responsible… and somewhere along the line, someone had accidentally flicked a switch and suddenly there’d been power surging through the systems Ryan had been operating with and… well it didn’t take a genius to figure out what’d happened after that. They’d heard about it from Lindsay when she’d came banging on their door about five minutes in AHWU, her eyes red and shiny like she’d been crying and Geoff had known, even before she’d said the words, that Ryan was dead...

And then he’d woken up.

The next time it was Jack. He’d apparently noticed how stressed Geoff seemed to be at work and had decided to treat him to lunch. Initially, Geoff had been hesitant to accept, remembering all too well what would happen if Ray went for lunch alone, but his hesitation with lunch plans had allowed Gavin the chance to change his mind and decide to take his lunch break with Ray, Michael chiming in that if the rest of the ‘assholes’ he worked with were taking a break, so was he. So Team Lads had gone out to grab lunch and Geoff had felt assured enough that Gavin and Michael would be able to take care of the younger lad that he’d agreed to Jack’s kind offer… Which naturally he’d ended up regretting a few hours later when the man also came down with food poisoning. Again he had to listen to the doctors wonder at how they’d never seen a case this fucking advanced before and Geoff had only barely kept himself from screaming ‘well good for you because I fucking have’ throughout the entire conversation he’d had with them. An hour later and Jack was dead.

And then he’d woken up.

Then it was Ray again. Apparently he’d decided, encouraged by the goading of Michael and Gavin (and really, why had he trusted those two idiots with looking after Ray again?), to attempt some parkour on the way back to the office… Geoff had seen his footing slip just as they’d been about to arrive back at the office. He hadn’t been far away to miss the sickening crack nor Gavin’s horrified scream as Ray’s body had gone limp.

And then he’d woken up.

The day after that, Gavin had been trying to cheer him up since apparently Geoff had looked particularly stressed that day (gee, he wondered fucking why)... so he’d made one of those dumb bets with Michael, daring him to eat one of those giant seafood platters that a place a few blocks down from them had just started serving. Michael had accepted the challenge with gusto and it’d looked like the redhead would be taking Gavin’s money (as per usual) when he’d suddenly gone a shade of pale that was becoming all too fucking familiar by this point. Of course he’d had fucking food poisoning. And this time? Geoff _did_ scream at the doctor when they told him they’d never seen anything this severe before. He took little mind of the confused, angry looks he got in return. It didn’t fucking matter. Gavin would be dead in a few hours and then he’d…

Wake up.

Then it was Ryan: Hit by a car, Michael: Stroke, Michael and Gavin: Immersion gone horribly wrong, Ray: Severe allergic reaction to something (though no one could figure out what), Jack: Fallen down some stairs and broken his neck, Jack, Ryan and Ray: Elevator cable snapped, Gavin: Drowned in the shower, All of them: Office fire that Geoff somehow managed to escape from entirely unscathed…physically at least.

Because whatever this this was, it was beginning to reach the point where Geoff could actually feel himself starting to lose his fucking mind.

\----

It’d been day one hundred and fifty three in his own personal circle of hell when he’d woken up to find something was different… namely the complete stranger sat on the end of his bed.

“What the fuck? Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my fucking flat?”

“Those aren’t the questions you should be asking right now and we both know it.”

“Fine. How did you change it?”

“Change what?”

“The day.”

“What day?”

“This day. It always starts in the exact same fucking way and since I’m pretty sure I’d remember some random stranger breaking into my apartment before now, you’ve… changed it somehow. And I don’t want to know why, I want to know how.”

“So _you_ can change it?”

“Why else would I be fucking asking?”

“Curiousity?”

“I’ve been watching my co workers die for almost half a year. You honestly think its just that?”

“I want to know what _you_ think.”

“Well isn’t that answer vague and not at all helpful.”

“What _do_ you think Geoff?”

“How the fuck do you know my name?”

“Your priorities really are terrible you know. I thought upstairs were kidding but… holy shit.”

“Wait upstairs?”

“As in wings, halos, insert some other angelic cliche here.”

“You expect me to believe you’re an angel?”

“You expect me to give a fuck if you don’t?” Geoff had almost smiled at that. Whoever the hell the woman perched on the end of his bed was, she had spunk, he’d give her that… and her presence, at the very least, was a refreshing change, which wasn’t really something that happened too often these days.

“Fine, let’s say for arguments sake you are one. Why are you here?”

“Curiousity.”

“You didn’t do,” He made big general gestures to the space around him, “all this then?”

“Nope. This stuff isn’t my division. More the higher ups and the cupid’s area of expertise.”

“What? Babies in diapers with wings and arrows?”

“Try fully grown naked men who like to hug people as a greeting... and I’m talking full on bear hugs here.” Geoff grimaced a little in sympathy at the image before reminding himself that none of what the woman in front of him was saying was real. She was probably just some nutter but then… how had she broken the pattern?

“Well what do these ‘cupids’ want with me?”

“Not with you. Well, not you specifically, you and your ‘coworkers’... Do you really just think of them as that?”

“Friends… family maybe, I think the lines blurred at some point.”

“I have a feeling they’d blur a little more if you’d let them.”

“What?”

“Oh nothing, not important, you’ll figure it out.”

“Does everything you say have to be vague and completely fucking unhelpful?”

“Nah. But its more fun this way.”

“You have a weird concept of ‘fun’.”

“You have a weird concept of ‘friends’.”

“Well what do the cupids want with me and my friends then? You never answered that part, not that you’ve answered anything...”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Clearly not if I’m asking.”

“...Wow, no wonder Caleb’s convinced this match is never gonna take off if its all resting on you to make the move and-”

“Wait… match?”

“Yeah match as in your souls have been matched at birth.”

“Like soulmates.”

“Basically.”

“There’s no such thing as soul mates.”

“There’s no such thing as angels and yet…” The woman gestured to herself, an amused grin playing at the corners of her lips.

“You know, still not buying that.”

“You know, still not giving a fuck that you don’t.”

“Touche… so the cupids want me and the guys to bang.”

“Something like that.”

“The cupids are pushy fuckers aren’t they?”

“The cupids were gonna let you figure it out for yourselves but, as it turns out, you’re all dense as hell so some of the higher ups decided to give things a little… nudge.”

“...Wait, is this why everyone’s been dying? What the fuck? Were the deaths really necessary?”

“Hey don’t shoot the messenger. I don’t give the orders.”

“You just follow them?”

“Nope, I just skirt around the edges looking for loopholes.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.”

“Ryan right?” Geoff nodded, “Do you know you get that look on your face when you talk about them?”

“What look?”

“You know, the dopey ‘I’m so obviously in love with you’ look you’re always wearing when you’re around the-... holy shit, you really don’t know do you?”

“...I’m in love with them?”

“You didn’t gather that from the soulmate part of this conversation?” Geoff flipped her the bird in response, an action that made her grin as she’d continued, “Yeah, you’re in love with them and apparently this whole plan from the higher ups was meant to make you realise that.”

“Then why did you interfere?”

“Because it was a fucking dumb plan and all it was making you realize was that you were fucking miserable.” Geoff had huffed out a weak, ever so slightly bitter, laugh at that, “My point stands.” The woman seemed to direct at the sky before turning back to face Geoff, “I’m pretty sure the key to ending all this is telling them how you feel for them, all of them. Only that can break the cycle.”

“But I’m not even sure what it _is_ I feel for them.”

“Yes you are. You’re just scared to accept it, along with the consequences that come with it. To be fair, most people are.”

“Well what if they reject me?”

“Geoff their souls were fashioned to match yours, do you get what that means?”

“That I just asked a question that was really fucking dumb?”

“Well I was going to put it a little nicer than that but… basically.”

“So one confession to all of them and this all stops.”

“That’s the theory.”

“Okay… guess I’d better go wake Gavin up then.”

“Gavin’s already managed to trip in the shower while we’ve been talking so this day’s kind of out of the running… the moment I leave though, the day will reset itself as usual. Then you just need to get him into the office in one piece, sit them down and tell them.”

“Right… I can’t believe I’m actually sort of buying into this.”

“This isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve had to convince someone of before, trust me.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Not if you want to hold onto what little sanity you have left.”

“What sanity is that?”

“The sanity that’s telling you to trust me and is convincing you even now as we speak that the reason you’ve been so torn up over the deaths you’ve been living and reliving is because you love them, Geoff Ramsey. And I’m pretty sure, once you give them a chance, they’ll love you.”

“...Who are you?”

“Other than an angel? My real name’s pretty much unpronounceable by the human tongue but… Griffon’s kind of close.”

“Griffon… nice name.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Well, take care of yourself, Griffon.”

“You too… and try not to hate Caleb too much for this. He didn’t want to go through with this loop thing any more than I did, we just had our orders.”

“Sounds like hell up there.”

“The fucking irony of that huh? But yeah, you wouldn’t be too far off.”

“I’m sorry you have to go through that.”

“Its fine, we all have our crosses to bear. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been through much worse lately. Guess its just a case of perspective really… Good luck with your confession.”

“Good luck with your bosses.” And then she’d been gone.

Three seconds later, true to her promise, he’d woken up.

\----

He’d been a little cynical about following through with what ‘Griffon’ had suggested, the cynic in him telling him it wouldn’t work, or it’d somehow backfire or that he’d actually legitimately lost his mind somewhere between the hundred and fifty second and hundred and fifty third death and he’d hallucinated the whole damn thing, or made it up as a coping mechanism of some kind…

But the off-chance that it would work was enough to drive him to at least try (because, at this point, it really wasn’t as if he had much to fucking lose was it?).

All the same, he’d never expected it to actually work until it had. He’d stood there, in front of his boys, nervous as dicks as he’d half blurted out his ‘confession’ only to be met with a shocked silence… and then suddenly he’d had an armful of Brit and the silence was broken by amused laughter and before the the hour was through they’d all agreed to get their lunch together that day as a sort of half-date to test the waters before they fully dived into anything.

Lunch had been pretty damn great. They’d laughed, made dumb jokes about things around the office and the people they worked with and each other and when no one had started coming down with a sudden groundbreaking case of food poisoning Geoff found himself genuinely grinning and joining in with the others conversation.

The rest of the work day had passed without incident… well, if you discluded the fact that both Burnie and Lindsay had somehow found out about their budding relationship before the day was out (something he had a feeling might have something to do with a certain Brit and a certain redhead given the guilty looks they’d both been wearing for the rest of the day after Burnie had just happened to comment on how ‘cute’ they were and Lindsay had made a comment about how they’d probably crash tumblr when they told the fans about this) and before Geoff had realized it, he’d been driving a very alive Gavin back home and receiving a cliched ‘kiss at the door after a date’ (that’d turned out to be all kinds of fucking perfect and… okay Griffon was probably right about him being denial about whatever feelings it was he had for a long time if he was already reacting like this to the Brit). After that they’d had dinner, played a few games and had gone to bed…

And then he’d woken up… and it was Tuesday! It was fucking Tuesday!

He knew the laughter he’d burst into after realizing that was probably hysterical, he knew that Gavin would probably be concerned if he overheard it but right now Geoff could really bring himself to care because it was fucking Tuesday and his boys were finally safe and alive and would stay that way for a long fucking time if Geoff had anything to say about it.

\----

The others had noticed how protective Geoff was of them once they’d started dating, how couldn’t they when he’d gone from being pretty laid back about almost everything to kind of jumpy around little things like Ryan’s Xbox or showers or the word ‘parkour’... and then there’d been that one incident where someone at the office had mentioned food poisoning and Geoff had suddenly gone pale and quiet and none of his boyfriends had missed the way his grip had tightened on the coffee cup has was holding before he’d managed to spill it (as per usual).

None of them knew what’d made the man so suddenly fearful of the world around him, especially where they were concerned, but after the first time (when they’d been met with silence), they’d stop asking. It didn’t matter what’d happened, what mattered was that Geoff knew he was safe with them and that they were safe with him and as time passed the man seemed to realize and to heal, to relax a little more around those little things in life.

And of course there were still the nightmares he got sometimes, nightmares where he’d wake up shaking and pale and would end up clinging to one of them for the rest of the night until their warmth and soft murmurs of assurance had managed to lull him back into an uneasy sleep. But the nightmares were a lot less frequent now and things were starting to return to pretty much how they were before whatever it was that’d happened to Geoff… well normal with the pretty fucking incredible addition of the relationship they’d managed to build over the last year or so.

They just hoped maybe someday Geoff would share his inner demons with the rest of them, so that they could help with the nightmares that much more, and maybe chase away the nightmares for good.


End file.
